Lilian Sten Tells the Story of Trinidad’s Legendary Pan Arranger

by Lilian Sten

Ray Holman was just 17 when he composed and arranged his first tune for the Panorama steelband competition in 1961. It was the start of a 40-year steel pan music career with few equals. Lilian Sten tells the story of Trinidad’s legendary pan arranger, from his first encounters with the instrument in 1950s Woodbrook to his latest international successes

As musical instruments go, the steel pan is a young creature. Myth and mystery surround its birth, and several persons have been accredited with its conception, but it is truly a child raised by the whole village, not the invention or property of any one man.
During its 60-something years of existence, pan has produced many unsung heroes — every iron-kudjoe and scratcherman is important to the music, every player matters — but the composers and arrangers stand out. They are few, they are great, and they are, usually, humble men who approach the music with love and respect.

Ray Holman, one of Trinidad’s foremost steel pan arrangers and composers, has been involved with the instrument since he was a child. After four decades as a musical trailblazer, he is one of pan’s many contradictions: a gentle revolutionary.
Holman was born in Woodbrook, the residential district in western Port of Spain, on April 22, 1944, just around the time when the first steelbands were being formed “behind the bridge”, in the working-class areas to the east of the city. Pan pioneers like Winston “Spree” Simon and Ellie Manette had sunk and tuned the first notes on the bottoms of oil drums when Holman was still a toddler; by the time he entered prestigious Queen’s Royal College (QRC), there were dozens of steelbands in the city, the Trinidad All Steel Percussion Orchestra had travelled to the Festival of Britain, and pan adaptations of classical works were being performed at the Trinidad and Tobago Music Society’s biennial festival.

In the early 50s, steel bands flourished in Port of Spain’s middle-class districts — Woodbrook, St James, Newtown. A multitude of bands, with names like Silver Stars Tropitones Troubadours and Green Eyes filled the air with the sound of pan practice every night during the Carnival season. Music drifted over the rooftops and seeped through open doors and windows, growing from the strands of simple melodies to the full force of road march contenders. Ray Holman knew the music long before he started to play.

Starlift, one of the first Woodbrook steelbands, was then based near Holman’s home in Hunter Street, and he passed the Invaders yard on Tragarete Road every day on his way to school. But it was the legendary Beryl McBurnie at the Little Carib Theatre who started Holman’s musical career. She provided the pans, the encouragement, and the place to practice. At the age of 12, Holman was performing in concerts; he formed a small group to accompany productions at the Little Carib.

He had a lucky start: his pans were made by Ellie Manette himself, and McBurnie was a visionary whose passion for the arts remains unsurpassed in Trinidad even today. Ray was also fortunate in that his mother, Iris, unlike many of her contemporaries, had the wisdom to allow him to play pan as long as it did not interfere with his schoolwork.
QRC was strong on music in the 1950s. The late Scofield Pilgrim, who taught Latin at the time, formed a jazz band, which included pan — possibly the first pan-jazz group ever. The QRC boys were able to use pans from the Invaders after Manette invited 13-year-old Ray into the band in 1957.

The young musicians played at concerts, functions, and dramatic productions at the school, but in those early days pan was not part of the official curriculum. Instead, seasoned panmen like “Cobo Jack”, Emmanuel Riley, Gerald Forsythe, and many others undertook Holman’s further musical education. He received a solid grounding in the technique, the culture, and the philosophy of pan in the Invaders yard. [MORE]